Comments regarding Zoysia Farm Nurseries

Just ordered and planted 75 3x3 super plugs, they came within a couple days of ordering, very easy to finish separating, only draw back was 2 trays had alot of clover mixed in with the grass. Just waiting to for them to turn green and slowly spread. Fingers crossed

My next door neighbor has a beautiful Zoysia front yard, did it in 3 different houses. I jusy finished my 21 days after plugging my yard. Watered every day for 15 minutes exactly by the book. Only had rain for 2 days of this period. ALL of my plugs turned the dormant looking color and still are. I called after about 2 weeks & was told they are getting used to your soil & it takes 30 - 40 days for it to do so. I bought your 5 lb bag of fertilizer, but have not used it, is it too late ? I'm feeling like it's not going to grow, worked really hard @ this ! Dave

Posted on May 25, 2012, updated May 26, 2012
Posted on May 24, 2012, updated May 25, 2012
Posted on May 24, 2012, updated May 24, 2012
Posted on May 24, 2012, updated May 24, 2012
I must be a little crazy, I planted 900 plugs 4 years ago and have seen no result from any of it, so now i buy 3100 plugs and ready to try it again. I just love this grass, I just wish i can get it to grow. this time im doing things different, im plowing my front yard, planting every 6 inches, and puting at least 2 plugs per hole and im buying their 20 20 20 nuti grow, but now im almost 2 weeks planted and i have about 6 different grasses or weeds growing, I know its to early to say the plugs have or have not grown but im going to try to post photos of what is growing and i hope someone will be able to let me know if its zoysia or something else.

"On May 25, 2012 11:14 AM, Zoysia Farm Nurseries responded with:

It always worries me a bit to hear someone planting a second time without maybe investigating what might have caused the first planting not to grow. It is difficult to tell from this post, but quite often there is an underlying issue that needs to be addressed. If that is the case, we have the professional staff here that can help uncover the cause and make this a beautiful Amazoy Zoysia lawn

We are “Zoysianuts” also and want everyone to be successful in growing a beautiful Zoysia lawn. We are proud to be The Zoysia Experts that homeowners have turned to for almost 60 years. Zoysia Farms only business is growing and selling Zoysia grass.

Our staff is available Monday to Friday, 8 am to 4:30 pm eastern to help anyone who wants assistance with any Zoysia lawn, 410-756-2311. We know Zoysia!
"

I am not going to bash this company. For all I know my yard next year might be a entirely different place or have the beginnings of that place I am dreaming of. I am just starting this process and don't know what my outcome will be. But I have read some very negative feed back on this board. I don't want to lump myself with these folks. I know my yard can be a success story and I will give this company the benefit of the doubt. I don't know Zoysia like they do. One thing I do know is that my brother has Zoysia and it is the most wonderful thing. He didn't plant it but the person who lived in his home prior to him plugged the yard and over the years it has filled in rather nicely. I watched this happen from a small 10 X10 to 40 X40 and growing more rapidly with each passing year. It is a beautiful carpet our children play on. My brother lives 5 minutes from me so I know I should be able to do the same thing in my yard. There is one thing I am confident in. I have a green thumb. We grew up on a 27 acre farm in western Pennsylvania so we are not novices when it comes to farming, planting and transplanting. I still keep a garden on long island and we do rather well.

I do have some complaints about what Zoysia Farms has advertised. These complaints are similar to others on this forum if not the exact complaints. And after some fighting with myself weather to send an email to them or not, tonight I did. Zoysia Farms has not responded yet but I am sure they will and promptly. So I can't provide you with their comments. What bothers me the most is that I watched a you tube video on the Zoysia Farms site showing their product and it's instillation process. The video featured beautiful green slabs of sod, root systems in great condition, the soil on the rear in place on the roots and scored for proper 1 by 1 cuts. It was a thing of beauty and got me very excited. But this is not what I received. I received brown sod with a few strands of green grass here and there on most of the pieces, many of the pieces of sod have portions of the root system with no soil at all just floating bare roots. I ordered 3800 plugs. I would guess about 18 to 20% are in poor shape to very poor shape. I was a little disappointed.

I started planting already and have worked my tail off. With some help from my son. I have been using all the sod even the many pieces without soil. I have followed each direction and after a few days after planting see some of the few green shots still there. This makes me hopeful. Then there are the pieces I planted that hand no green on them at all and the brown grass just fell off. There are many of these and fewer of the green ones but I am hopeful and will remain this way. I have not planted it all yet. The sod that has been removed from the box and moistened is starting to show some green and the blades are moving the dead to the side.

I will keep updating this as we go along.

I live in the KCMO metro area and ordered 600 plugs from this place a couple of weeks ago. I had originally planed to just order the plugger as I have a few patches of zoysia in my yard and was just thinking that I would transplant what I had. After looking at the 400 plug package that included an additional 200 "free" plugs and the plugger "free" I decided to give it a go since it was only about $25 more for the 600 plugs than just the plugger alone. I recieved the plugs in much the same way that others have, what appeared to be brown dead grass on the top and scored into 1" plugs on the back. The brown didn't really bother me because it looked almost identical to the patches well established zoysia that is already in my yard that had yet to really green up for the year. Besides I think it is a little naive to expect much if any green grass from this type of plug. I am by no means an expert on grass. I couldn't identify one from the other if I had to. However it is my belief that what is more important than what the color of the grass on top is, is how healthy the root system is. The roots are what you want to grow. Once they are established then you will see the stuff on the surface grow and spread. I am not expecting to see much of anything from my plugs that I planted this past weekend until the end of next summer. If I get some before then...outstanding. But I figure it will take all of this summer for the roots to start growing and then next year the grass will start growing.

I am saying that I have had neutral experience because I just don't know what the outcome will be yet. I suspect that a lot of the negative stuff on here was premature. Given enough time, I can't help but think most all of the plugs will eventually grow, but that is just me. Zoysia is not for the modern day person that wants it fixed now. If that is what you are looking for, skip the pluggs and fork out the bucks for the sod.

My biggest complaint is 1) there wasn't enough dirt on the pieces of sod they shipped me and when I cut them up (which the 1" square thing is a joke) into 1.5 - 2" plugs often times I would end up with just the roots and no soil to go with the plug. Again I believe the roots to be the most important part and planted those bare plugs, but it made it more difficult. 2) The plugger they sent me worked well for 2-3 holes then it would clog up and I would have to clear it out. My recommendation would be to use to differnent sizes of pipe, one the size that is used for making the plug hole, but then have that connect to a larger pipe so that the next plug removed pushed the first plug into the larger pipe so that is no longer stuck in the original pipe. Don't know if I explained that well enough but...

Other than those two things...as of now I am satisfied with what I have received and planted. Hopefully next year my yard sees some of the plugs growing.

Right now is too early for me to rate this company and their product. so I give Neutral for now

at the beginning, I was very disappointed about the grass I received, they look like dead grass, a lot of soil falling while I cut it to 1 x 1 plug, the plugs from the first two were almost bare root, it forced me to cut it into bigger size.

April is rainy season in Maryland, luckily, we had couple thunder shower several days before I planted my plugs, so the soil was saturated, because of the bare root, I used the free step on plugger to make the holes, and covered the hole with the unplugged soil , press firmly by hand so the grass root have full contact to the web soil. and we still had couple thunder shower in the past week. Just about a week, I already see some new grass coming out on almost all the plugs.

I believe right now is the right time to plant the plugs. In Maryland, day time is about 60 to 70 degree, night time is about 50 degree, a lot of rain, something I did right was I use the unplugged soil to firmly fill in the hole again, just step on the plug is not enough .

Posted on April 27, 2010, updated May 9, 2010
Well, I figure I will add my experience, as limited as it may be now.

The plugs arrived in a timely mannor (within 2ish weeks), and they were exactly as described in other posts... brown, dry blocks of sod. If there were any score marks on the back side, they crumbled off in the shipping. Documentation everywhere says that they are dormant and supposed to be brown, so I am not worried about that. As the plugs were so dry, and there was so little dirt clinging to the roots, there really was no way of cutting the blocks of sod into 1" squares we tried and just ended up with a handfull of grass clippings... I am glad that I purchased 2Xs what was recomended as the smallest we could cut them was 2"x2" with the dirt falling away. (yes the sod pieces were damp)

It took the good part of 3 days to get the 3800 plugs (really 950ish as we couldn't cut them as small as zoysia farms recomends) planted. we did as they recomended and stepped on the plugs after planting to ensure good root contact with the soil. The lawn had been prepared by watering the days prior (to ensure the ground was damp enough to plant), and the lawn had been SCALPED with my new mower set as low as possible. All large weeds had been hand pulled, and the smaller weeds had been eliminated by using weed-b-gone the week prior (as recomended by zoysia farms)

So, where are we now... It's been two weeks, Temperatures have been in the low 80s, and I have been watering for 15 minutes each day as recomended, on the days that we've had light rain, I have not watered, and on the heavy rain days, I have skipped watering the next day as well. A few (like less than 10) of the plugs show a tiny bit of new growth, the rest look like dead brown hair plugs in my lawn. I do have to say that the bahaia that the zoysia is supposed to be replacing is LOVING the water each day.

So, let's see what happens... I will update every two weeks to let everyone know what the status is. Hopefully this will end with a "I'm loving my zoysia lawn" post. As I see Zoysia Farms monitors this site, I welcome their comments and recomendations as I'm sure my situation is quite common, and I am very motivated to make my yard as beautiful as their site shows zoysia can be.

Thanks.

Right now, I am certainly NOT pleased with the grass plugs that I received. I ordered in mid-March, they arrived May 21. As most comments suggest, they were very brown and dried out. I'm not really a gardener so I don't know what kind of bugs were on them but there were certainly quite a few. I was disappointed by this point but decided being I had spent the money already, I would go ahead with planting. I ordered 600 plugs and got 3 sections of sod. Most of the dirt was already gone so I could not see the scoring. I planted them the same day they arrived. I followed the directions and cut as close as I could to the correct size using a garden shears. The step on plug thing wasn't exactly "self cleaning" but after about 15 minutes I realized that shoving a spike through the cutting hole between digging holes would loosen the trapped dirt enough so that I could more easily dig the next hole. It took me about 3 hours to get all of the plugs planted. I have been diligently watering them every day in an attempt to get them established. It is now 46 days after planting. They really look pathetic (I planted some grass seed a week later in other areas of my yard which have fully filled in now). The plugged area is black dirt with little balls of brown "straw" still. However, if I look closely, there is 1 or 2 strands of green in each bundle. I'm still watering them every day and my husband says I got took but I'm still holding on that I just haven't given them enough time yet. After reading the posts, I am hoping that they will soon come around because right now, I'm really wishing I would have just bought an extra bag of seed and been done with "establishing" my yard.

"On Jul 6, 2009 2:09 PM, Zoysia Farm Nurseries responded with:

Minnesota is one of the states for which a USDA inspection is required before shipment. This is to insure the product complies with all required state agriculture standards. The first inspection for Minnesota shipments took place this year on May 13 and according to UPS this order was delivered on May 19. This order was held pending the inspection date.

With the limited information provided, it is hard to know why this customer had some issues with the step-on-plugger. Compacted soils can make the ‘self cleaning’ not very efficient and some wetting of the soil might have helped. I think the best advice is what this person did; try different approaches and use the one that works best.

From the posting, the Amazoy is being over watered. In our instructions we advise to lightly water for 21 days after planting. 46 days is too many. Amazoy zoysia loves hot dry conditions. A little water is necessary each day after planting, but too much water will damage the roots at a time it is attempting to establish itself.

We want all our customers to be successful and the good news is we stand behind our product. We guarantee to replace any plugs that fail to grow, even when the planting instructions have not been followed fully.

I live in Oceanside, CA and plugged in approximately 1600 of them suckers. I would say 90% of the plugs were brown but I was okay with it knowing what I got I myself into. I also pulled out all my pre-existing lawn, mainly crabgrass, st. aug and fescue mix. I was able to get my yard tilled and mixed in with soil. I thought this would be the best chance to see if these plugs would grow faster without any competition on a complete bare soil lawn. I did use some pre-emergent weed killer to keep seeds from germinating. However, I'm starting to see all kinds of weeds sprouting so I'm not sure how this will play out. I'm thinking of using corn meal gluten as a natural fertilizer and weed killer later in the summer.

As of now I'm just pulling (weeds) what I can on a daily basis so it doesn't get out of hand. I'm not sure what else to do. As for the plugs, they are definetly green now but I 'm not sure if I can see any stolons because I don't know what they look like and I for sure can't see any rhizomes. What I do see from the plugs are new grass growing straight out but I'm not sure if it zoysia or not. Can someone show some close pics of these sprouting?

I don't think the work was all that back breaking maybe boring as hell. Pulling out my lawn was more of a back breaking job and I lost a few pounds in the process. I hope someone has some insight similiar to mine. I really hope this works out because I anticipating a beautiful yet lower maintenance lawn. If it doesn't work out I'm going with either Marathon sod or El Toro sod.

"On Jun 24, 2009 1:59 PM, Zoysia Farm Nurseries responded with:

This project is on the right track for success. The critical stage is getting the plugs planted and established. It sounds like that phase has been successfully completed.

Pulling out an old lawn, while not necessary for success, will definitely help in establishing any lawn and in this case your Amazoy Zoysia lawn. Keeping the weeds under control with a pre-emergent is also beneficial at any time as you are eliminating competition for nutrients.

Initially the plugs will work on establishing their roots in your soil and stolons will only start to appear once the roots are gaining nutrition from the soil. They are quite easy to see once they appear as they look a bit like an above ground root from which new grass shoots will appear while sending down new roots. Stolons are a bit hard to describe in words, but once you see them there is little mistaking what they are. As we always say patience is the key word with zoysia grass it does everything slower than any previous experience you may have had. The reward; the low maintenance lawn you are looking for.

One general word of caution, I recently read an article about corn gluten, in which it said this is commonly sold as animal feed and unless it is labeled as a natural pre-emergent herbicide it will not provide any weed protection.
"

WOW!!!!!!!!! I'm not sure if I should try this grass or not. I live in Az where it is hot!!! HOT I SAY HOT!!!!! Today it's about 103 tomorrow it's 108 next day 108 next 102 the 87. Why out of all these comments I have not seen one from Az. I know that the diamondbacks use this grass in there dome. Controlled environment and they had the money to alter the conditions. Does anybody know if this grass will grow in the hot southwest desert? Give me a yell! I would love to here honest answers.

"

Zoysia Farm Nurseries has been in business since the early 1950's growing and selling only the original Meyer Zoysia grass released by the U.S. Deptarment of Agriculture . It was developed by the USDA in conjunction with the U.S. Golf Association which was looking firstly for a heat and drought tolerant grass for golf coursed in the hot dry desert areas from Souther California to South Texas. The beauty of Amazoy Zoysia (our brand name) is that it can also withstand the extreme cold often associated with winter nights in the desert and much further north. This is not true of all zoysias.

We are the original providers of zoysia grass for home owners. No one has been doing it longer. I think we know just about all there is to know about zoysia. Below is a testimonial from out website by one of our Arizona customers, I think it says it all. Be careful who you believe, not everyone is an expert on Zoysia grass


Wickenburg. AZ -- "Grew in desert conditions"
"When we moved here we were told by our landscape architect, that the zoysia would not grow here (we are intermediate desert). But we tried it anyway. Was he ever embarrassed a couple of years later when he saw our thick lush lawn." --J.N.

All the best
Zoysia Farm Nurseries"

I wish I'd have found this site before I placed my order,Luckily I ordered small! I'm going to withold judgement until I get my sod,and see how things go. I am however very interested in zorsia,and may have to look for a new source

"

As the leading supplier of zoysia grass plugs, you have come to the right place. We have 50 years experience helping many millions of homeowners have beautiful zoysia lawns. We are confident once your zoysia fills in you will also have a beautiful lawn.
With your shipment you will receive complete planting instructions covering different planting situations. Please follow the simple step by step instructions, it is really the best and simplest way to insure success. If you have any questions, beyond our planting instructions, please feel free to contact our customer service team, who can give you expert advise. We are here to help. They can be reached Monday to Friday 8 AM - 5 PM eastern time at 410-756-2311.

Happy planting! "

I am interested as to why there is no shipping to Oregon or Washington?

I am very interested in this product, however I can't get it...

"

Amazoy zoysia grass is very drought tolerant and as such does best in the heat of summer in dry conditions. Unfortunately, Oregon and Washington get their fair share of rain and as such we have decided not to ship to these states. Zoysia is really not a good choice for lawns in the northwest. Additionally, we offer a 100% replacement guarantee for any grass that doesn't grow, thus our desire to only sell Amazoy into areas where it will do well. This protects both the customer and our farm.

There are many good choices for lawns in wet areas and the northewest. As zoysia experts, we can tell you, Amazoy zoysia is not one of them."

Prior to my retirement to South Carolina, I bought a starter house and planted Zoysia plugs on the front lawn (from Zoysia Farms in 1973)...a few years later only half of the plugs survived. It was a lot of hard work. Never again.
Moved from the starter house in 1985 to larger house and the lawn in the back yard already had Zoysia grass established, very uniform growth and green. For the next 22 years, I appreciated the efforts of the previous owner who established the Zoysia grass, because I only mowed the grass in the back yard once or twice in the summer seasons I lived there. And I never watered the backyard. Mother nature took care of that. Occasionally, I would give it some 20/20/20 fertilizer when I thought about it. Maintenance is almost non-existent with Zoysia grass. A few years before I retired, I decided to cut small portions of the Zoysia grass from the backyard and plant it between the sidewalk and the street curb. It had covered 75% of the area before I sold the house.
Now I am down here and bought about 100 3-inch square plugs to start. The plugs are packed in garderner's crate separately and very green. If you do not plant immediately, take the crates out of the boxes and put them in full sunshine and water everyday (crates have drainage holes). Then plant them at your leisure.
The only problem I had with Zoysia is that of concrete slabs or walkways. It will find the slightest crack and grow....once established, it is very difficult to remove it. I used table salt to limit its gowth during the summer season. After any rain, re-salt the cracks!!!!! Also used salt liberally on the seam between the curb and street with good results.

"

We are sorry that not all of the plugs took 35 years ago. Today, we continue to offer a replacement guarantee for any plugs that don't grow within 45 days.

As to the zoysia gowing into cracks in the concrete, commercial weed killer should do the trick. Salt is a good environmentally friendly alternative. Vinegar actually might work a little better. The best solution, is patch the concrete after putting down one of these alternatives. Good luck and hope you continue to enjoy your zoysia lawn."

We recently recieved our Zoysia plugs from Zoysia Farms - and have planted about 100 plugs so far. Back Breaking work - and had I known then what we know now - I would NOT have ordered this grass.

Ours, too, came brown - we read the message about "don't be alarmed" - yea - ok. We've been watering our squares for 3 weeks, and we do have some green shoots among the brown sod.

We are keeping it watered, and we are slowly planting the plugs - however - after reading the reviews - I don't feel so hopeful!

I, too, emailed them when we first got the "grass" and that was on 5/18 - it's 6/1 and I have not heard from anyone. I also called on 5/25 @ 4:24pm - and am still waiting for a return phone call.

I will post an update in a few weeks, when we have hopefully planted all of our plugs. And let you all know what is going on. But your negative comments definitely have me worried now.

I'm not sure if I would have ordered from Zoysia Farm Nursuries if I had read some of these reviews but I felt compelled to post as my experience has been different from so many here. After much research regarding grass types for my Atlanta area lawn, I settled on Zoysia. I found Zoysia Farm Nursuries online and ordered the plugs. It did take a couple weeks to recieve the "plugs" by UPS. I called once to check on the order and I was told that they were going to ship to Georgia the following week, and I got them Thursday of the following week. I got the impression that they ship an area based on the weather/planting season. That is just an assumption, so don't count on it. The sheets did have some soil attached. I cut them with a garden shears and it was apparent rather quickly that I was cutting too big to cover the area I planned. I ended up covering about 2/3 of the area I thought I could with the material shipped. The plugging tool was very cheap, but it was relatively easy to use and performed as advertised. If I had covered the intended area if is doubtful the plugger would have made it. As of this writing the plugs have been in the ground since Friday, it is now Monday and they are already starting to turn green and some new grass (very small blades) are coming up from some of the plugs. It is too early to say if I have been scammed, but I don't think so. Other than the sheets of sod not going as far as I hoped I'm pretty happy thus far. If it all dies and I don't get any grass I will amend my post.

FYI, at the Better Business Bureau website, this company is listed under the parent company "The Shelburne Co., Inc.".

Zoysia farms out of Maryland. Ordered what I thought was about 8000 plugs to do my entire yard - front and back. I only received enough to make 6000. I was short about 2000 plugs. I called them the next business day and was assured that amount would be shipped to me. Their customer service department has always been helpful with my questions.

Their literature states you can get 150 plugs from 1 piece of 10x15 sod. I was getting about 70-80 plugs per piece just because the sod did not come scored and it is difficult to cut a 1 square inch piece of grass. The cutting itself is not difficult, it's just that the grass starts falling apart when you cut it that small. I recommend using a serated kitchen knife. That worked the best after trying pruning shears and scissors.

Long story short. I ended up doing about one quarter of my enitre yard with the amount of plugs I did receive. It is a long process and I had a lot of help from friends and family, but all the plugs are in the ground and they are all brown. They should stay brown 3-6 weeks and then go green and start spreading, we shall see. If not, I will take them up on their free replacement policy.

I had gone through Zoysia Farm Nurseries (ZFN) website and was preparing to buy and that would have been a pretty large order. I sent them a detailed letter with many questions about my yard situations, with spaces for them to write an answer after each of my questions (saves them writing a reply). I received a nice typewritten reply that covered about 1/4 of my questions. Their ad seemed almost too good to be true, especally the replacement policy . But after reading the 4 negative vs no neutral and no positive reviews I am about convinced not to try them. Or if I do, to do so with a very small order VS the large ofder I had planned.
They also say they have been in business for decades, but can only fill a 1/4 acre order. That is quite odd. For a larger order they recommend I buy seed. Yet in their web site literature they do NOT recommend seed and state why (e.g.: its weak compared to plugs). There is more material that raises questions.
Somewhat confusing advertising.
A key (and my first) question, which they did not answer, was regardng my mower. I have two different type modest-size ROTARY riders. But I believe Zoysia requres a REEL type mower vice a Rotary (which means I'd have to get at least one new mower) Anyone out there know for sure? Anyone in the Tampa Bay, Florida area who has had experience with Zoysia? I asked the U of FL 3+ decades ago and was told Zoysia (specificially, Zoysia Tenifolia, also known as Korean or Flagstone Grass) will not grow in a sandy soil. {Z. tenifolia grows great in Long Beach, CA, where I frst saw it in 1968.} ZFN says theri Z. Meyer 52 will do just great here / everywhere. Something seems not right here?!?
Help!
Thank you writers (each of whose complaints were similiar), and this web site's provider, for the heads-up.
Murf